


Sexual Relations

by mrstater



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Big Sisters, Gen, Little Sisters, Sexual Identity, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sybil confronts Mary about her sexual past, and reveals dreams of being a revolutionary in the bedroom as well as in the voting booth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sexual Relations

**Author's Note:**

> _"The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same."_ (Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington)

  
"Are the rumours true?"

Mary looks up in surprise from her book, so quietly has Sybil crept into her bedroom. Ordinarily the raised eyebrows would relax into a smile for her youngest sister, whose barging in, somehow, has never been unwelcome (Edith, however, would have--and _has_ \--had the book thrown at her) but tonight the bedclothes rustle as Mary's legs fidget beneath them.

"There are so many rumours," she answers in the breezy tones of avoidance typically reserved for her parents, or Matthew, or anyone else to whom she'd rather not make herself vulnerable. She's dreaded this moment, hoped Sybil's head was too full of schemes to help their housemaid find employment as a secretary and dreams of women dropping ballots into boxes to pay attention to the petty obsessions of most of their social acquaintance. But it seems that hope, like so many others, has been in vain. "I suppose the odds are rather favourable that at least one or two of them would be true."

"The ones about you." Sybil pushes off the door, against which she's been leaning since she pushed it silently shut, and pads across the thick carpeted floor to the bed, ever persistent. "And Mr Pamuk."

She's eighteen now, but, standing there hugging the bedpost, wearing her nightdress with her glossy dark curls tied back with a haphazard ribbon, Mary sees the baby sister who always shadowed the big girls, wanting to be a part of their play, or their talk. If she put out that full lower lip, she always got her way and so much more than Mary or Edith did at that age. Which annoyed Edith. Which was why Mary let Sybil have her way as often as was appropriate.

And though now Mary at first hesitates as to whether it's entirely appropriate to discuss _sex_ , of all subjects, with her baby sister, it's clear that Sybil isn't ignorant of the subject. If she's determined to learn--and these days, Sybil's thirst for knowledge is more insatiable than ever, as evidenced by the number of times her name appears on the library ledger next to the titles of books on history and politics--who better to learn from, than a sister?

The irony of that, in light of recent conversations with their mother full of disapproval and disappointment, is not lost on Mary. But even a ruined sister is still a preferable source of information to, say, the chauffeur who seems to be Sybil's private tutor and co-conspirator these days.

"If I own to it," Mary says, closing her book and running her fingers over the leather cover, "are you going to be one more person who looks at me as though I've a scarlet letter pinned to my bosom?"

Sybil moves around the bed to the empty side and climbs up into it, slipping beneath the sheets as she used to do in the middle of the night when they were little. Her feet, which she puts on Mary's calves, are as frosty as ever--Sybil never was one for slippers--but her voice is warm. "If you own to it, I'll look up to you, as little sisters are meant to look up to their elders."

" _Look up to me?_ " Mary cringes inwardly at how like her grandmother she sounds. Granny's most annoying habit--apart from being hopelessly set in her ways--is the way she repeats whatever thing anybody said that scandalises her or strikes her as stupid. Nearly as bad was what follows next, which Mary is helpless to stop tumbling out of her lips: "Whatever for?"

"For following your heart."

"Oh, Sybil." Mary rolls onto her side to face her sister on the pillows. "You haven't learnt yet that the heart often has very little to do with sex, have you?"

She half-expects the dark brows above the wide blue eyes to knit as Sybil works out this meaning, but instead Sybil tilts her chin defiantly. "Very well then--I look up to you for embracing the truth that women have physical desires, too, as much as men do."

"I believe you underestimate the physicality of men, darling."

"I think it's wonderful."

It should be sweet, Mary thinks, to at last have one of her family on her side. But one good word is a mere drop in a bucket that is already filled to brimming with bitterness. Her eyes drop to her fingers, which pick at a pull in the eyelet trim of her sheet. "You must not have heard the salacious part of the story where Mr Pamuk died in the arms of a slut."

"Mary!" Sybil pushes up on her elbow, looking scandalised for the first time in the course of the conversation, for all the wrong reasons. "Don't talk about yourself that way!"

"Why not?" Mary meets her eyes. "It's the truth, isn't it?" Admittedly, it would be an easier pill to swallow if it had been administered by anyone but Edith.

"Of course not! Or if it is, the same is true of nearly every man in the world."

Mary laughs. "That's taking suffrage a little far, don't you think? You needn't make _every_ man into a womaniser in order to present the case that a double standard is applied to the female sex."

"Doesn't it trouble you?" Sybil asks, her face a little reddened--but not, as Mary notes, because she's offended, as Edith would be, by her sister's laughter. She sits up, managing somehow even with a pile of fluffy pillows at her back to look like a woman on a platform giving an impassioned speech. "Why should it be expected, or desirable, for a man to enter into marriage with experience, while women must be spotless virgins? Either we should hold men to our standards, or they shouldn't expect us to abide by a code of conduct they themselves find impossible to keep."

"Why don't you run along to Mama's room, and repeat all this to her? You plead a convincing case." And Lord only knows how Mary needs someone to be convinced she's not wicked.

Sybil ignores her--or doesn't hear her at all, so caught up is she in her egalitarian dreamland. "Imagine it, Mary--a world where we may give ourselves to any man of our own choosing. Or not. Regardless of family or class or...or anything but our feelings."

Mary wonders if it's temptation to give herself to any particular man that have inspired this thoughtfulness from Sybil. Was there anyone at her recent débutante ball? she wonders, but can't recall Sybil sharing more than one dance with a given man. She thinks of those long drives Sybil takes with Branson--and of the way she's caught him looking after her sister. _Ridiculous_ \--but that doesn't stop Mary from trying, for just a moment, to imagine the act of love in the back seat of a Rolls Royce. It seems decidedly uncomfortable and untidy and too inconvenient to be romantic.

Not that making love in the more suitable location of a bed is any different.

She touches Sybil's knee. "Someday that world might exist. But not while you or I are young enough to take advantage of it, Sybil dear."

"The world is changing as we speak. The war is changing it."

Mary glances away, as if to turn aside from the image that springs up in her mind of Matthew in khaki and mud and lying in a trench. "Yes...We may very well find ourselves living in a world where all the young men we would take as lovers find narrow beds beneath the fields in France."

Sybil visibly pales at this, and Mary _knows_ she's thinking of someone--she prays not the chauffeur, though the defiance in Sybil's voice gives her little hope of that. "All the more reason not to be constrained by old-fashioned conventions."

"Gather our rosebuds while we may?" It's meant to mock, but Sybil nods her head in earnest agreement. Mary sighs. "Much as it pains me to admit it, there are certain things the Bible has more right than the poets. Take it from someone who didn't let the rosebuds bloom in their appointed time."

To her great relief--because it's difficult enough to have her mother's disapproval for her own sexual misdeeds without taking the blame for her sister's, as well--Sybil appears to be giving this some thought.

But, on her way out of the bedroom, she pauses in the doorway to say, "I really only came in to say that I don't believe you've done anything wicked."

"No," Mary agrees. "Not wicked. Only weak. Unfortunately, the consequences are nearly always the same."


End file.
